


A Note on the Land

by wtb



Category: Hellboy (comic)
Genre: Archaeology, Bosnia, Case Fic, Gen, bprd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:49:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtb/pseuds/wtb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate and Hellboy help a researcher deal with the reemergence of long-lost monuments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Note on the Land

**Author's Note:**

  * For [barrowjane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/barrowjane/gifts).



  


_   
_

_(With apologies to Dizdar, Tanović, and the kovači and dijaci of ages past.)_

_   
_

          I.

          "Intriguing little fellow, isn't he?" Kate said. "It's just a greeting, though. Nothing to do with you."

          "Mmh."

          "Makes a nice change from normal, anyway."

          She was looking towards the road, mostly, waiting for their guide, but out of the corner of her eye she'd spotted Hellboy raising his right arm in a gesture mirroring the relief figure in front of him. His shadow was outlined sharply against the weatherworn marks on the tombstones, blue and inviting in the pink morning haze of what was already becoming a hot day.

          "These aren't the new ones, right?" Hellboy's voice was low, talking to himself as much as he was to Kate. Eyes still on the road, Kate was about to answer when her cellphone's message tone pierced the lull of faint buzzing and chirps in the tall grass. A succession of rapid clicks, and the phone was back in her pocket.

          "That's her," Kate said. "Kid's sick, had to deal with him first. Should be here in minutes though. No," she said as she started towards the stones, gesturing broadly to indicate the lot, "these have all been indexed a while ago. And then again, just before the nineties I think, because they tend to disappear."

          "Disappear." Deadpan delivery notwithstanding, there was no sarcasm in his voice. Not that she'd have held it against him, considering the size of the monuments.

          "You've got rocks in a field." Kate took up the matter-of-fact mien. "Large, yes, old, yes, respected if not outright venerated, sure, likely, but at the same time you'll _always_ have people breaking down masonry to build new things and, well, look." Another arm sweep. "Rocks by the side of a road. There's a highway right next to Stonehenge, so what makes you think scattered tombstones can outweigh the money in construction permits?"

          "I thought that's what _Poltergeist _was for."

          "No, that was to make kids stay away from television. Worked on my nephews like a charm." She reached for a back pocket and took out a map, unfolding it over a squat, unadorned stone, and moving around to block out the sun that was making it illegible. "What I'm trying to say is that disappearances are regrettable, but not unusual. This stuff, however - ah." She looked up with a smile and raised her hand in greeting as Hellboy turned at the sound of a car pulling up.

          "Dr. Corrigan," the woman said as she opened the door, half question and half a relieved statement, "and Mr. Hellboy?"

          "Hellboy will do, ma'am," he said as she shook hands with Kate.

          She negotiated his right hand with as much elegance as was feasible. "In that case, Jasmina will do." Dr Jasmina Kolar, Kate had said; professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Mostar by day, tireless promoter of cultural heritage by... day.

          Like Kate said, at least it made a change.

          "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," Jasmina said, giving them a pained look. "I have a teenager at home, you see. Went out last night, drank god knows what... probably trying to prove to his friends here what a big man he is. He's excused for now, but wait 'til I catch up with him. Well. Never mind now. Did you have a map there?"

          "I have all that you sent," Kate said, pointing back at the map that she'd pinned down with rocks despite the still air. "That's the original one."

          Jasmina nodded. "I'm glad you decided to come. I wasn't sure if I even had a case for you, let alone whether a few maps and hasty photos would do. At first I thought we were just lucky with the finds, then I thought we could be dealing with an elaborate fraud to god knows what purpose, and finally I thought I was just going crazy."

          "As I understand it," Hellboy said, "you've had _new_ stones come up?"

          "_Literally_." She paused, then pressed the bridge of her nose. "At least I think so. I'm sorry, I'm not used to such things happening. I like to think I'm rational –"

          "It's all right," he said. "You can be rational - and right - and have crazy stuff happen. And have us here looking into it." Her head snapped up, face flushed. "Oh, I wasn't counting _you_ –"

          He put his human hand on her shoulder and inclined his head momentarily towards Kate. "Dr. Corrigan knows all about that." "Oh, and how," Kate picked up, heartfelt. "And I'd had training; I thought I'd recognize things on the go. I thought I'd be prepared. "

          "All right then," Jasmina said. "You can tell me if I'm mad or if there really is something to be concerned about. I'll be honest with you, I thought by now I'd have something to help bring some more tourists over, rather than your Bureau. We're not lacking in international attention of the administrative kind here."

_   
_

          II.

          _I fear not wolves, but people._

          _Were it up to the wolves, this stone would outlast eternity._

          -- anon. epitaph at Radimlja, 1337 [N. A. Tanović]

_   
_

          "Well, damn," Hellboy said.

          They were standing between two intact rows of a fairly large vineyard, looking at a beautifully carved stone that must have weighed a good few tons. Not something easy to plant unseen, or without disturbing the vines. And yet there it was, looking as if it had sprung up from the ground -—an explanation both Jasmina and the agitated owner seemed at pains to avoid.

          The man looked like he'd come from the earth himself, sun-worn skin and sinewy limbs reminiscent of his plants, his voice betraying a love of home-grown tobacco. His English was sketchy so he gave up on it early on, opting instead to express his alarm to Jasmina who was apparently doing quite a bit of editing in translation, at least judging by what Hellboy could instinctively identify as curses.

          "His workers didn't want to touch it," Jasmina explained, "even though he'd called down the - the local priest, who said – okay, never mind the details; they had an argument -" She broke off to argue briefly with the man herself. "_The point is_," she said, "the priest was of no use, so he called the mufti for advice."

          "Makes sense," Hellboy said. He could sense Kate grinding her teeth, but then the owner started talking to him in the tone and stance of a man who had done everything right for the world, but the world just wouldn't listen. Hellboy looked to Jasmina for help.

          "He's saying that he's not a particularly religious man," she said, "but you can never be too sure."

          "I know what you mean," Hellboy told the man, who responded with a righteous grunt.

          The owner suspected sabotage or a ploy to get him to change pay rates, according to Jasmina's deft negotiation of the colorful local idiom. She confirmed that she too started considering pranks when she came across this stone - or a setup for somebody's publicity platform. "Like those damned pyramids," she said.

          "What pyramids?" Kate asked.

          "_Exactly_."

          The absence of text in the carvings was a good clue, disputable though it was. Jasmina argued that the symbols and motifs present in the carvings were easy enough to copy from existing stones, all the ornate bands and the wheels and the deer, but any epitaphs would have required a mastery of medieval phrase, not just the alphabet. And then the other shoe loosened, ready to drop.

          "This is where it gets weird," she said, stepping away from the stone. With the owner's help, she explained how painstakingly the vineyard's rows were set and marked in place, and how precise they still were. Despite the monolith in their midst, the vines and the fences were all in their correct place, the earth around them undisturbed. "You can't drag this in without noise. If something breaks, you can't just stick it back into place without it showing."She paused to exchange a few quick words with their host, who retreated into the house.

          "I asked him to bring some refreshment for the guests," she said. "Said I'd dragged you out first thing in the morning and we haven't stopped. But I want to tell you this in private because I fear losing his trust otherwise. I can't be seen as superstitious."

          Kate nodded towards the stone. "Is it that this looks like it was pushed out of the earth?"

          Jasmina looked upset and relieved at once. "Is that what it looks like, to you? It's a grim prank if it is one." The first stones she'd come across – the ones she'd showed them in passing on the way to the vineyard – she put down as simply overlooked or displaced, and hadn't bothered with inspecting the ground since they were regularly overgrown, surrounded with nettles and blackberry bushes; she'd photograph them and move on.

          The owner rejoined them with a platter of figs and dry-cured ham, and some soft drinks. He apologized - through Jasmina who was yet again removing profanities on the fly – about being unable to offer his vineyard's finest, but the work had stopped and what he'd had in stock sold out. They parted in good cheer, though Kate noticed that Jasmina was a little distracted now that she had a matching second opinion on her suspicions. She thought of reassuring her colleague as she had before, but instead let her take them to the site where, in Jasmina's own words, she worried she might be losing her mind.

_   
_

          III.

          The sun was quite in its element, dominating the cloudless sky by the time they reached Hodovo, daring the locals and the tourists alike to brave it and spend time outside. (To the Bureau's relief, all opted to stay in.) This was only one of the dozens of necropoles strewn across the land, but Jasmina knew it well and considered it almost an affront to her hard cataloguing work when three new stones took their places among the familiar old ones. Worse yet, these had words running down their sides and she couldn't find a fault with them.

          "They're upside-down," Hellboy pointed out.

          "Two are," Jasmina said, as if there was nothing strange about that. "This large one is-- wait, you can read this?"

          "Not really," he admitted. "But I can guess pretty well, with this stuff."

          Kate observed all three stones carefully. "Only the text goes in the wrong direction, right?" Jasmina nodded. "I understand," Kate said. "The carvers weren't necessarily literate, and this kind of work is not something where you'd have had the time or the money for repairs."

          "If you even knew that there was something wrong," Jasmina added. "A _dijak_, scholar, would have been responsible for the text, more so than the patrons or the carvers, as you say."

          "What of the good one?" Hellboy said, pointing his thumb at the large stone behind him. "Oh, that's an ironic one," Jasmina said with a brief laugh. "It belongs to _dijak_ Gost." She traced the precise letters that spelled it out. "It's just an old name, but it means 'guest' nowadays. Some guest."

          "What else does it say? I mean, talk about a wall of text."

          "The usual. You will be as I am, etcetera, don't move this mark because no-one will respect you either when you die. 'Mark' here – _bilig_ \- refers to the stone, obviously. It's a more common term, in fact."

          "Huh." Hellboy made a note. "I suppose you could call it a curse, but it's pretty damn boring compared to—what's wrong?"

          Jasmina was looking at the smaller stones – relatively smaller anyway – with a finger pointing up, like a lecturer who does not wish to be interrupted. "You were right," she said. "These _are_ upside-down, entirely. See the vines?" She turned, beckoning them forward. "These grapes here are simple triangles but- oh no." She stood up.

          "What's wrong?" Kate insisted.

          "My kid. My brother works at the hospital down in Stolac, you see, so I just dropped him off because I knew his uncle could take it from there. I was already late to see you, so I didn't – I _knew_ there was something about the way he said it!" She was speaking fast; Kate had to cut in. "Who said what?"

          "That bastard at the vineyard. He knew there was something wrong with it! I _thought _I saw his wife at the—look, I have to go. I'm sorry, I just – I'll keep in touch. Maybe it's nothing." She said it like a question, seeking assurance.

          "Wait, I don't –" Kate was trying to keep up. "Are you saying that that guy's wine had something to do with this? And this is why he wouldn't offer us any?"

          "I think he knew there was something wrong with it. I thought my son was just hung-over at first, and I yelled at him, but then—"

          Kate and Hellboy exchanged looks. This was edging into familiar territory.

          "You go see your kid," Hellboy said. "Keep us informed." Jasmina gave a nervous nod.

          Within moments, her car was a trail of dust speeding towards the town.

          "All right, this doesn't look good," Kate said, pulling out the map of known sites, already folded so that it centered on Jasmina's finds. "We've got sixteen new stones – assuming she located them all – and if they're messing with the ground we're in luck because only one is in some sort of an arable field. That's the vineyard."

          "Looks good to me, so far."

          "Right. But that's sixteen stones that we know of _in the vicinity_. We got pinged when this started looking serious, so I'm guessing new stones might be popping up elsewhere as well. And look." She let the map unfold fully and slapped it with the back of her hand, tearing it.

          "Crap," he said. "That's _everywhere_."

_   
_

          IV.

          _You know nothing of the signs of the vineyard / And its tender_

          _You know nothing / Of the value of such gifts. _

          -- Mak Dizdar, _Brotnjice_ 

_   
_

          "Here's the thing," Kate sighed. "I don't know where to begin. There is no single consistent belief at work here. You think it's complicated now... nobody really knows what these people subscribed to in their day. We can only guess. And as for this new stuff, I don't even know if it's from the same source."

          "Back to the basics, Kate," Hellboy said. "What do the stones have in common?"

          "Well," she said, taking a deep breath, "... don't move."

          He did a swift three-sixty turn, primed for fight. "What?"

          "No, not that," Kate said. "'Don't move.' These stones. That's as basic as it gets. Maybe the word 'mark' means more than just the stones being marked, or that they mark graves. Maybe it's really important that they are where they are?"

          "Right," Hellboy said. "But that one's upside-down. In that case... I have an idea."

          "Is it the idea that you normally have?"

          "What do you mean?"

          "You'll punch it."

          He looked almost apologetic. "Yeah, but punch it _back in_, the way it's pointing, and maybe the way it came; that's got to do something. You got a better idea?"

          Kate shrugged in defeat. "I thought for once we could avoid desecrating things." Hellboy shot her a look. "All right," she said. "Stamp that thing back in."

          He jumped up, landing on top of the monument. He wasted no time in applying his trusty stone hand to the vulnerable limestone below, half expecting it to crumble. Instead, as it connected, he grunted in pain and rolled over the side. He was ready to get up as his hooves barely touched the ground, but the dizziness was too much. Leaning against the warm stone to steady himself, he looked around to see Kate doubled over and falling to her knees, retching.

          Before he could check on her she was on her feet, fumbling for the flask in her utility belt. "Can it _get_ any hotter here?" she rasped. She turned towards the stone to sit in its shade, but there was none. It seemed the sun was directly above them, but the entire sky was so blindingly bright that he quickly gave up trying to locate it.  Hellboy cursed his human-grade eyesight; it was difficult to make anything out clearly.

          "What the--?" It struck him all at once. The massive block he had fallen off was pointing the right way up now, but it was the only one around. The rest of the landscape – as much of it as he could discern in the shimmering heat, anyway - seemed intact. At least he could ignore the parching air. Kate wasn't so lucky.

          He yelled for anyone to come forward. That did nothing, and he had a suspicion that the booming reverberating noise was only making Kate worse. He felt as if the world had shrunk to this, a barren valley in some white-hot metal bowl. Any way he put it, this warped, intense place grated on his senses. He threatened to smash the stone; no response. What else was there to do?

          He remembered the scholar's name, Gost, and called for him instead, adding a couple of the vineyard owner's curses for good measure. Such words tend to last well into centuries; he hoped whoever was behind this would understand them.

          Whether it was the name or the blasphemy that did the trick, Hellboy didn't care. The man who appeared in front of him would have some answering to do, and the books that were tied to his modestly dressed body or hung off it by ropes were clue enough that they were on the right track. For whatever reason he was easy enough to see, and – ah. This was good. The man's bare feet stood on a blank slab of stone in the ground, marking the same spot where the ornate, named monument had emerged.

          "Right, you," Hellboy barked. "Move. Kate," he said in a gentler voice, "scoot over there. You might feel better." The man was entirely dispassionate, but stepped aside regardless, keeping within the edges of the slab. Kate obeyed, sitting down in front of the scholar but facing away from him, and drew her light jacket over her head to shield herself from the sun. That space at least allowed her some shade.

          "You try anything with her there," Hellboy said, "and I'll find you."

          "I have no doubt of that, beast," Gost said. Hellboy found his matter-of-fact stance irritating. Usually they threatened, dared, or cajoled. This creature was wetter than a drowned fish, or would have been if any water was present in this... wherever they were. But he didn't seem worried either.

          "What the hell do you want?" Hellboy asked. There was no point in games.

          "You should know." He pointed at the space just above Hellboy and made a circular motion with his finger. "Your crown is made of the sun."

          Hellboy would have none of it. "My what? What the hell is this place?"

          "Not Hell," the man said with a sad shake of his head. "Beast, you can lord over men yet you let them tell you who you are."

          "Yeah. Look, if you're gonna stand there and preach about my fate or any such crap—" The man untied a book and offered it to Hellboy, unperturbed – "because I'm _tired_ of – okay, I've got no time for this." He reached for Kate instead, but she looked up with renewed vigor.

          "I think they're trying to hide," she said.

          Before Hellboy could ask anything, Gost nodded.  "The stars may keep our secrets but the sun sees all."

          "Sees what? Hide from what? Kate, you okay?"

          "The same thing we're trying to stop, I think," she said. "The bigger picture. That's why he thinks you know about all this."

          Hellboy paused. "The dead? Fleeing?" He recalled Rasputin, Hecate, Morgan, all reminding him of his place in that new world they hailed and heralded. He turned his attention to the scholar, unconvinced. "What do you care? You're _dead_."

          "That's where it starts," Kate answered in Gost's stead. "Everything is upside-down here, look." She gestured towards the stone with one hand, the other still holding her jacket up as an improvised parasol. "And the people are just... people. They can't defend themselves."

          "Right," Hellboy said, focusing his gaze once more on the man. "So what, now, you're_ evacuating_? Pushing your houses into the backyards of the living? Poisoning their crops? That'll work."

          "Without the marks we have nowhere to go. They are no good here." Gost pointed to the lone standing stone, its carvings already vanishing with the dust and the heat. "Without the names and the places this happens to us."

          Kate turned to look up at him. "But most of the names are already gone, and the places –" Hearing this, Gost handed her the book he was trying to give Hellboy earlier. She hissed and nearly dropped it, but managed to handle it using the jacket's sleeves as mittens. She looked at Hellboy. "It's – it looks like - records. Hundreds-"

          "-Where they should be," Gost finished.

          Hellboy took the book but wouldn't look at it, holding it up instead. "You wants us to put all these stones in their places, write all the names as they are in here?" Gost remained impassive, and pointed at the ground in that matter-of-fact way. "We will do that. Make new ones where nothing is found. You understand."

          "Oh no I don't. How about you try being dead for a change? Properly dead? Finito? Kaputt?"

          The scholar seemed taken aback, the first crack of emotion. Hellboy pressed on. "How long have you been here? Six hundred years? Seven? More? And this _after_ you had your time being alive? Don't you people _ever_ have enough?"

          "They do." Kate stood up, but didn't step off the slab. She was still dizzy; Hellboy tensed, ready to grab hold of her. "When Dr Kolar sent me those maps," she said, "I looked them up – the stones – and everything I could find... there wasn't a single belief going on. In fact --" she swayed a bit, and in his quick assessment of the situation Hellboy noticed that the scholar's face was not so serene any more, "many were happy to move on. Go -- go northwest towards the mountains and you'll find entire graveyards of -"

          "Enough!" Looking agitated and afraid, Gost moved as if to strike her, then clutched a book instead. Whatever his plan, Hellboy was faster. He knocked the man off his slab, Gost yelping as he landed on the cracked dusty earth. He got up remarkably fast but his feet didn't make it back to the stone. "Oh no you don't," Hellboy said, holding him up in a grip that tightened more the more the man flailed.

          "I gave you voices!" Gost shrieked. "Here - _here_ \- I allowed you to speak!"

          "I guess we're not the best guests either," Hellboy said.

          With Gost off the slab, Kate felt her mind clear. "Tell me, good _dijak_," she said, "you are a master of words, clearly. But how many people did you listen to, and how many did you talk into this limbo instead, with your promises of eternal life? If they had a choice at all."

          Hellboy looked at her. "What do you mean?"

          Kate kept her gaze on the man. "He would have been the writer for these inscriptions, being literate. He could have put whatever he wanted on there. Maybe not for everyone, but his ilk would have had power over most of their congregation."

          "Charming," Hellboy told the man. He was met with familiar disregard, though this time there were fewer aloof comments, and more rasping and reaching in futile swipes for the stone in the ground.

          Hellboy turned to Kate. "How do we undo this?"

          Gost panicked. "What? You _beast-_"

          "Yeah, you said."

          The scholar was flung  away from the slab with the full force of the Hand of Doom. He was running back for it before he even hit the ground, but grew grotesquely dehydrated halfway and tumbled over, a mere shell, books dissolving into dust under his thin frame.

          "Uh," Kate said, looking at her still intact volume. "I think we might have kept him for a while longer. I can't read this."

          "Then we need to take it back. Let's try." Hoisting her up with his human arm, Hellboy stood in the middle of Gost's precious slab and struck as he had before.

          Next thing he knew, he was sitting on the cool fresh earth, the massive monument bearing Gost's name overturned about a yard away. Kate was up, book firmly under her arm, inspecting the stone they'd first used as a portal. "Come here," she said, focused on the carvings. Nice of her to check on him, and all.

          He got up, brushing the dirt off his back swiftly with his tail.

          "This is good, right?" Kate asked. She was pointing at a relief that hadn't been there before, a silhouette holding up a circle - or reaching up for the sun. "No idea," Hellboy said. "He said I was the same as that thing. That can't be good."

          "I'd beg to differ," Kate said with a bright smile. "I think you have a say in the matter. Besides, this fellow seems to be happy with the sun, and our chthonic friend feared it. Either way," she said after a beat in which Hellboy looked about to get lost in thought, "there's still some damage repair ahead."

_   
_

          V.

          "I still don't get how you provoked him," he said, trundling down the road to town. Some paces ahead, Kate turned around to indicate that she was on the phone. "Right," he told the world at large.

          Jasmina was relieved to inform Kate that all the patients who'd fallen weirdly sick - and were drifting further out - had recovered in the last half hour. (Kate turned to give Hellboy an enthusiastic thumbs-up.) Doctors had put it down to poisoning based on the families' testimonies, but what exactly went wrong with the brandy they'd all had was yet to be determined. Hellboy grunted his approval as Kate promised to keep the Bureau involved.

          Kate folded her phone and put it away; Jasmina had insisted on picking them up but Kate was adamant in her wish to appreciate the day now that a breeze in the cypresses was promising a cooler afternoon. She'd hand the book over later, over the big dinner they were promised. She hoped Jasmina would agree to their plan of releasing the souls Gost had tied to the stones with his magic; they might have to rely on the tradition of vandalism Jasmina had denounced earlier without a profanity filter, but so it went. Was there anything else? Oh, right. "You were asking me something, back there?"

          "I don't know what you said to make the guy lose his cool."

          "Oh, that," Kate said, face flushed. "I was bluffing." Hellboy raised his eyebrows but said nothing; she carried on. "There's a tradition, up in the mountains overlooking the coastline to the north, to bury people in church graveyards–" "Wow," Hellboy said before he could help himself. Kate refused to respond to that, continuing briskly instead. "-- but since the procession has to rest somewhere along the steep route, the deceased can be laid on the ground just once, and that's where the soul will remain. People mark the spot, and you end up with graveyards of the souls."

          "Huh."

          "Those headstones are also keen on symbols of the sun. The way they're placed, they get the first of the morning light. I can't tell you if it's part of the same tradition as the stones here, though; I gambled."

          Hellboy shrugged. "He believed it." It worked, that's all that mattered.

          "Anyway, I think it's a lovely tradition."

          "You would."

          Kate laughed; it was a good sound, and Hellboy allowed himself to imagine that the weatherworn relief of some long forgotten man on the side of a monument lying by the road smiled in recognition of it. His hand was raised in greeting, which they both returned.

_   
_

  


**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, fellow Kate fan!  
> Reading 'Hellboy' and 'BPRD' I was always impressed with the span of mythologies and the depth of research that goes into the stories, but I was also a little disappointed that the characters never seemed to stop by this particular nook of the world, where there's so much cool old stuff to explore.  
> Thank you for giving me the opportunity to send them there myself, and I do hope you enjoy this little detour from the canon arcs.
> 
> [The one thing I worry might be too obscure is the pyramid dig halfway through the story; just look for 'Bosnian pyramids' online and you'll see what that's all about. The rest of the elements used here, however - the monuments (stećci), the soul graveyards (mirila), &amp;c. - are as factual and verifiable as it gets without actually, well, being tampered with by power-hungry ghosts and such. :)]
> 
> Much love to my indispensable beta, Frimfram.


End file.
